TransPlant: an OncoMouse(TM) journeyQuimera Rosa (ES/AR/FR)

mixed media installation (video, prints, lights and material remained from biomedical research and performance), 2019

This installation puts into dialogue two central routes of the Trans*Plant project, which aims to experiment with a process that engages a body towards a human/plant hybridization. The first one is a biomedical research in order to replicate the Photo Dynamic Therapy. PDT is based on an intravenous photosensitive molecule used to destroy malignant cells. The second route of that molecular journey of self-experimentation, was a performance based on chlorophyll IntraVenous. An almost invisible performance, where light is no longer a visual representation but destructive energy for non-photosynthetic beings.

> [blue for human eyes] Hangar, Barcelona 2017. Photosensitive molecule δ-ALA under a wavelength of 460 nm. > [green for human eyes] Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana 2017. Chlorin E6 photosensitive molecule under a LED with a length of 525 nm. ***

This work is part of the installation Trans*Plant: May the Chlorophyll be with/in you, a multimedia installation that aims to present the work behind the Trans*Plant project, as well as to produce a speculative fiction. It is a piece based on hybrid low-technologies, where leftovers from the past and the future get entangled. Videos, written narratives, scientific excerpts, Mycorrhiza interacting with the audience, cryogenic Artemisia annua seeds and DIY biotechnological materials are part of the elements that establish the connection between the theme and the transdisciplinary and experimental form of this lab installation.

  • March 2016: Beginning of the Trans*Plant project, which aims to experiment, within the current environmental crisis, a process that engages a body towards a human>plant transition.
  • December 2017: First chlorophyll intravenous injection, at Kapelica Gallery, Slovenia.
  • March 2036: The annual Earth resources are exhausted and we witness the global Internet final shutdown.
  • December 2037: A bio-hackers community connects a VPN to Mycorrhiza network.

Video edition: Quimera Rosa and Mariángela Pluchino

Sticker design: Roy

The work was realised with the support of DICRéAM – CNC, Hangar.org (ES), Antre Peaux, GeniAlis (FR) and within the framework of the European Media Art Platforms program at Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co KG with support of the Creative Europe Culture Programme of the European Union.

Quimera Rosa (ES/AR/FR)

Quimera Rosa is a nomadic lab created in Barcelona in 2008 that researches and experiments on body, technoscience and identities. Our aim is to develop practices able to produce non-natural cyborg identities from a transdisciplinary perspective. They assume Donna Haraway’s notion of cyborg, that defines it as: “chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism.”Aware of transfeminist and post-identitary discourses, they seek to experiment with hybrid and flexible identities that can blur the frontiers of the binomials of modern Western thought. Most of their work is done in a collaborative way, always free of proprietary codes. It has been presented in streets, contemporary art centers, bars, galleries, universities, concert halls, colleges, discos, museums, squats, festivals and theatres.

Contact: https://quimerarosa.net